Flame and Fire
by Miss Yvonne Hartman
Summary: She wondered if anyone had gotten a picture of them in that moment. If a lightning fast shutter had captured the upward tilt of her face and the way his arm hung gently at her elbow to guide her into the car, into a new life. Tollie.


Flame and Fire

She wondered if anyone had gotten a picture of them in that moment. If a lightning fast shutter had captured the upward tilt of her face and the way his arm hung gently at her elbow to guide her into the car, into a new life.

Tollie, set after their time on the Island (and then later post relationship), when they return home and have a choice to make…

I don't own Smallville.

AN: Having Déjà vu? I have given all my works an edit, spit and polish and reposted, so enjoy and please review – Y xx

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i.

_He had come to feel an inexplicable love for this all but complete stranger; she seemed a child to him, a child someone had put into a bulrush basket daubed with pitch and sent down-stream for [Thomas] to fetch at the riverbank of his bed. _

_The Unbearable Lightness of Being, _Milan Kundera

They stood apart slightly in silence. Her red hair was being pulled into ribbons in the slight breeze that took to the streets, kicking up flurries of litter and leaves, blown into the unfeeling direction of speeding cars. Tess Mercer wondered what it would be like to step out in front of a car. Would it hurt? Would she feel anything in the sudden step and blinding collision that would send her hurtling to join Megan. She doesn't move, she stays on the pavement at his side, part fear and part common sense holding her back.

Tess puts her hand inside her bag and clutches the slip of paper that will give her a certified identity until she will receive reissued passport and birth certificate and a debit card. She wants to consider how funny it is, that an entire life can rely so heavily on a book of a stamped paper and two slips of plastic. But when she does think about it, it isn't funny at all.

Oliver turned to her as a dark town car appeared at the end of the street and approached where they were waiting. "Well." He said.

Her green eyes met his dark browns but she doesn't say anything. Just looking up at him in a way that was slightly unnerving. Like she was examining him, checking him off against some list in her head – what was she thinking? Did he measure up for good or bad? It was a splinter in his head, the way she cut him open with her gaze. He gestured at the car that had rolled to a stop, the chauffeur stepping out and smiling – "Mr Queen."

"Do you know where you're going? I can give you a lift if you like." He offers.

Her brain kicks through her sparse contacts. She doesn't know where to go. Louisiana is too far away and she cannot bear to ask for a plane ticket or even directions to the bus station. She doesn't want him to think she is vulnerable or lost. She could go to see Megan's mother, the woman was practically an auntie to her. Tess should go; she should be there for her. And yet she knew that the weight of shared grief would break her tiny body into red splinters. She didn't want to go back to Harvard either; to those hallowed halls that would still ring with the laughter of a dead girl. It would not give her any comfort. She needed to disappear. To bear out her grief in a private darkness somewhere. "No, I'm ok." She demurred, looking at the ground, clutching securely to the paper in her bag, "I prefer to walk anyway."

The man with the curious name, Oliver Queen, nodded and ran a hand through his newly trimmed blond hair. "You don't have to leave right now, you know." He says. "You could always stay with me till you get back on your feet."

It's a tempting offer, to curl up into his arms and his life and be taken care of. But Tess knows that if she doesn't keep herself moving and thinking that she would be swallowed up by her grief in the way a carnivorous plant closes up on a tiny, trembling insect. That she would be rendered frozen by her loneliness and her fear of the world. Oliver is looking at her with an odd mix of expressions in her eyes and she wants to say yes, she so desperately wants him to hold her, like all those nights on the boat when he held her through her nightmares, but she says no instead.

"Give me a pen, Tess Mercer, and some paper." He directed and she produced the only paper she had – her letter of introduction from a top Miami lawyer, slightly crumpled in the corner from the grip of her slightly clammy hand – and a pen she had nicked from the writing desk in her hotel room. Oliver scrawled down a series of numbers and two addresses. "Ok, when you get a phone, call me. I'd like to know you're doing ok. I'd like to buy you dinner."

"What?"

He shrugged, "I don't really know how to thank you. I mean, you saved my life." He said, "Dinner… dinner might not be enough. You name your price – diamonds, do you like Bulgari?" he questioned, her expression growing more bewildered and embarrassed. "Or money. How about your Harvard fees? You let me know whatever you want; I am forever in your debt."

"I don't want anything from you." she says all too quickly, too hotly. "I mean…" she let him see what was in her eyes and the intensity made him take a step back. Her heart was fierce and proud, beating under her fragile, cracked skin. The little flickers of her soul shining from behind her freckles. In the gold he could see flecking the emerald of her eyes. "I don't think you can buy a life like that." She said in a whisper. "I did what I felt was right. It is a gift; it does not have a price."

Oliver wanted to kiss her in that very moment. To take her into his arms, this strange child-woman and hold her with his face against her sun warmed hair.

"Thank you." he says and she gives him a smile. There's pain in her smile, and a sadness that makes her subtle beauty seem even greater and rarer.

"Good bye, Oliver. And thank you." She raised her eyes to his, squinting slightly from the bright silvery sky, and she goes to shake his hand while he reaches out to hug her. They hang for a second, uncertain of what to do when he takes her offered hand in his and pulls her against his chest for a hug at the same time, putting his face to her dark red hair. He can smell the hotel soap and sun and her skin. It could be an addictive scent. Tess has her cheek pressed against chest, below his shoulder and she closes her eyes. There is too much pain, in her heart, her veins, too much loss. She feels it sharply like a blade in between her breathing. And yet his embrace, his warm breath on her neck, she feels so suddenly and sensitively aware of her fingertips and her eyelashes and every centimetre of her skin. Do you not flame, and I catch fire?

They pull away at the same time and it does not feel awkward. She runs a hand through her hair and Oliver wonders if she knows just how sexy that is. They smile.

"Call me, ok." He says, "even if it's not a repayment for how amazing you were, let me buy you dinner, as friends."

Her proud heart shouts something but her mouth smiles instead, "That would be nice."

She wants to say something more. She wants to tell him that it's not his fault. She wants to do something about what he must be feeling. She sees that beneath his lavish wealth and his handsome face that he is scared, that he is a beautiful and fragile boy and with her fierce heart she wants to protect him and give him something to protect in return. He hugs her once more and she tries to put as much of her timid, shining thoughts and feelings into it as she can. She owes him a thank you in return, despite everything that she has had stripped away from her.

Maybe he understood because he kissed her cheek, quite close to her rosebud mouth –but not close enough – and let it linger longer than she expected.

"Come with me, Tess." He says. "Why are we playing this game, anyway?" Tess could demur again, but she knows she won't. He held the door open for her. "I know you loved her and I know how much it hurts to lose someone you love." She wonders who he has lost, as she meets his eyes and sees that these are not empty condolences. "You don't have to be alone, Tess."

She wondered if anyone had gotten a picture of them in that moment. If a lightning fast shutter had captured the upward tilt of her face and the way his arm hung gently at her elbow to guide her into the car, into a new life. Surely there would be a record of the two of them. A grainy image on the hotel security camera, a polaroid snap taken by a passing tourist on the other side of the street, a mental image seared into someone's mind… Tess wants a picture. She wants to see what they look like to a stranger. Do they bear any signs of what they have been through? What does she look like, standing in clothes that she does not own with her red hair bright in the midday sun? Can anyone see that he has, in those fleeting seconds, made her believe again? And what of him? Does he really stand like a hero, or is she the only one who can see that in him?

ii.

Cold years have passed between them. He has not seen her face outside of his dreams and memories, even those are dimming and becoming confused and jumbled up with other memories and incorrect thoughts. It was a very cold day the day he could not conjure the specific shade of her eyes.

He has a small sheltered bench on the outskirts of the forest that is in the centre of Star City. The cool darkness between the trees does not hurt his drunken head and the people who use the park do not come this close to the forest and so cannot disturb him. The forest is a place of myth and fiction. They say that magic happens here. Oliver does not believe it is true. There is no magic in his life anymore. Oliver Queen had roughed it on an island for two years, and it had made him stronger. But now he was ruined, alone, with no lovers and no allies. There was a bad investment, a bad break up with the greatest woman he had ever known. And then there was nothing. All the money lost, the Queen Empire destroyed in a day.

He had been trying to sleep and it felt as if he had just closed his eyes when the sun was rising, bright silvery sky above him. He sat up and it was then that he saw her, her red hair in ribbons on the wind. Was she some angel come to take him away?

"I've been looking for you all night." She held out a paper bag to him, inside was hot coffee and toast and croissants, she held warmth and comfort and love in her small hands. Her smile didn't judge or pity. "You need to shave, Oliver." She said, sitting down beside him.

"Tess."

"Your lawyers called me since no one knew where you were. The money was found, Oliver! The market turned and it's all back." She smiled. "Your father's company is back. Your company is back."

The shock outweighs his hunger and tiredness and despite all the angst and burnt fingers, the years that had hardened them both, Oliver leant forward and kissed her rosebud mouth. She pulled away but not before she had pressed her lips back against his. There was still fire in her scarlet mouth.

"There's a car waiting, you can get cleaned up and back on your feet." She said while he ate and drank. His lips still warm from hers.

"Mercy." He said with his mouth full and swallowed so he could talk clearly, "I thought everyone had forgotten, or hated me… you came back."

She brushed her hand through her hair and brought her lips to his forehead, keeping them pressed there as he broke down and sobbed, clutching her tightly to his side like she was his life raft and he, drowning sailor, could do nothing but let her hold him in the safe haven of her arms.

_And all at once he fancied she had been with him for many years and was dying. He had a sudden clear feeling that he would not survive her death. He pressed his face into the pillow beside her head and kept it there for a long a time. _

_Now he was standing at the window trying to call that moment to account. What could it have been if not love declaring itself to him?_

_The Unbearable Lightness of Being, _Milan Kundera

Fin


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